7 policy matters that will get serious play at the Capitol in 2010

The hemorrhaging from Minnesota’s epic structural deficit - currently pegged at $1.2 billion for the remainder of the 2010-11 biennium, and $5-$8 billion for the two years after that - will eat up most of the time and headlines in the 2010 Legislature.  But state budget problems won’t be the only issue taken up by lawmakers in 2010. A raft of policy issues are expected to get time in the relevant House and Senate committees this session.

From election laws to copper mining, the hearing rooms will be packed again this winter. Among the issues to watch:

Public pensions: Administrators of the three major state public pension plans are coming to the Capitol this session with a painful suggestion: Lower benefit increases for retirees.

Lawmakers tried to improve pension funding levels earlier this decade by increasing employer and employee contributions. So far retirees haven’t had to share the pain. But the plans’ boards said last fall that lawmakers will need to consider lowering retirees’ 2.5 percent annual increase.

The Teachers Retirement Association said lawmakers should consider lowering or freezing the increase for two or three years. The Minnesota State Retirement System is recommending that lawmakers lower the increase to 2 percent in 2011 and not restore the current rate until the plan is 90 percent funded.

Sen. Don Betzold, DFL-Fridley, the chairman of the Legislative Commission on Pensions and Retirement, said the plans won’t regain long-term fiscal stability even if the stock market chalks up strong gains.

“The major funds were hoping to hold off until 2011. But the numbers are so dire that they feel they need to come in the 2010 session,” Betzold said.

Eliot Seide, president of the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees Council 5, said in November that he opposes any move to reduce retiree benefits. In an election year, cuts to retiree benefits and increases to employee contributions will be a sensitive issue.

“It’s easier to demonize the issue than it is to solve it,” Betzold said.

Governor’s unallotment powers: DFL legislators are hoping to rewrite Minnesota laws that give the governor broad unilateral authority to cut state spending to fix budgetary emergencies. Speaker Margaret Anderson Kelliher, DFL-Minneapolis, said last June at a Legislative Advisory Commission meeting that she expects to see legislation introduced in 2010 that would clarify and narrow the governor’s unallotment powers.

Kelliher and DFLers were enraged that Pawlenty signed the budget bills passed by the Legislature and then used unallotment to cut $2.7 billion from the 2010-2011 budget. And the high-powered Finance Committee chairs in both legislative chambers, Rep. Lyndon Carlson, DFL-Crystal, and Sen. Richard Cohen, DFL-St. Paul, have been working on legislation in the run-up to the 2010 session. Cohen says the unallotment statute is vague, and he intends to propose legislation that puts the law in conformity with its “original legislative intent.”

Adding impetus to the unallotment reform agenda at the Capitol is a Ramsey County District Court order on Dec. 30 that reversed one of Pawlenty’s unallotments. The court ruled that Pawlenty’s actions had violated the constitutional separation of powers. An appeal by the Pawlenty administration is pending.

Broadband: The logjam on high-speed Internet proposals could break in 2010. During the decade just past, advocates of universal broadband access proposed a mandate of 1 gigabyte per second available to all Minnesotans. But that pitch was beaten back by the cable industry, and the issue has lain dormant for the last two sessions while the Minnesota Ultra High-Speed Broadband Task Force prepared a report on the state’s Internet needs.

That report, released last fall, sets goals in Minnesota for download speeds of 20 megabytes per second and upload speeds of between 5 to 10 megabytes per second by 2015. Rick King, a Thomson Reuters executive and task force chairman, said he hopes lawmakers adopt the goals and recommendations.

Earlier this month, King told Finance & Commerce’s Arundhati Parmar that he has received “good support” from the relevant committee chairs in the House and Senate. He added that the task force was working to gain support from legislative leaders and the Pawlenty administration.

Because it has such a broad impact on cable companies and other internet service providers, the broadband standards debate brings out contract and association lobbyists in droves to legislative hearings on the subject. The press conference for the task force report’s unveiling was attended by representatives from firms such as Lockridge Gridal Nauen, GSP Consulting, and Winthrop & Weinstine, to name a few.

Charter schools: The Legislature passed charter school reforms in 2009, but an explosive series of articles in the Star Tribune last fall helped put charters back on the legislative agenda this year. One important issue uncovered by the Strib investigation: conflicts of interest between charter school boards and the construction companies that build the schools themselves.

Sen. Kathy Saltzman, DFL-Woodbury, who chairs her chamber’s Subcommittee on Charter Schools, said that the law dealing with charter facilities will be revisited in 2010, along with the broader question of lease aid. (The state provides lease aid to charter schools because they aren’t allowed to get money from local property tax levies.)

In 2010, the state plans to pay $45 million in lease aid to the state’s 150 or so charter schools, which have around 39,000 students in all. Saltzman has pointed out that the amount of state lease aid is rising faster than charter school enrollment.

High-speed rail: Plans are being made for a high-speed rail corridor between St. Paul and Chicago that would run along the Mississippi River. But the exact routing of the line is still a matter of controversy. In particular, the Southeast Minnesota Rail Alliance - along with legislators and advocates from the Rochester area - is pushing for the Legislature to modify the route to include the city of Rochester. The group has hired the Minneapolis-based Himle Horner public relations firm, and in September they released a report comparing the two routes.

The controversy over the corridor has mostly taken place in the Senate. The issue has been quieter in the House. House Transportation and Transit Policy and Oversight Committee Chairman Frank Hornstein, DFL-Minneapolis, said the Legislature’s role right now isn’t to designate a route.

According to Hornstein, the first duty of lawmakers is to make sure there is a plan that spells out the options so Minnesota can get in line for federal money for the project.  He added that there will be a joint hearing of the House transportation policy and finance committees about the state’s recently released state rail plan.

Copper mining: Environmentalists and Iron Range legislators are expected to collide this session on a bill that would require companies mining nonferrous metals such copper to provide upfront financial as assurances that any needed site cleanup will be conducted.

Rep. Alice Hausman, DFL-St. Paul, and Sen. Jim Carlson, DFL-Eagan, introduced bills last session that were immediately denounced by fellow DFLers from the Iron Range, who said it would kill new mine projects. The debate is taking place as PolyMet Mining Inc. is trying to get state approval for a copper mine near Hoyt Lakes. The Minnesota Environmental Partnership has included Hausman’s and Carlson’s proposal among its top four legislative priorities for 2010.

The bill didn’t receive a 2009 hearing in the House Environment Policy and Oversight Committee. A refined and more narrow version of the bill will be introduced this session.

House Environment Chairman Kent Eken, DFL-Twin Valley, said it’s not certain yet if the bill will get heard this session either. He said he believes there’s a need for better financial assurances from mining companies. But he doesn’t want to advance legislation that pits environmentalists against the economic interests of northern Minnesota.

“The verdict is still out on whether we’ll have a hearing on it. It depends on the language,” Eken said.

Elections: A recently-passed federal elections law - and the contested U.S. Senate election between Al Franken and Norm Coleman - will be fodder for a couple of important state election law proposals.

A bill by Rep. Steve Simon, DFL-St. Louis Park, and Sen. Terri Bonoff, DFL-Plymouth, will move the state’s primary from September to August. The proposal, which will be heard early in the session in relevant committees, would put Minnesota in conformity with a new federal law that changes the deadline for absentee ballots to be sent to soldiers and other overseas voters. The move to August appears to have bipartisan support in the Legislature.

Secretary of State Mark Ritchie would like to centralize the process for counting ballots on election night. Beth Fraser, director of government affairs in Ritchie’s office, said there’s a proposal taking shape to have ballots processed by city- and county-level employees rather than at the precinct level. Uncounted absentee ballots were an issue of contention between the Coleman and Franken campaigns.

“One of the key things is to centralize where absentee ballots are processed,” Fraser said.

The issue of early voting, which was a priority for Ritchie in 2009, will probably have a lower profile in 2010. A proposal to allow people to vote early without an excuse was stripped from an election bill last year. Fraser said Ritchie still supports early voting. But it’s too late to implement early voting for the 2010 election if the legislation were to pass.

Rep. Kent Eken, DFL-Twin Valley, has a proposal to bill to amend the Minnesota Constitution to require all state elections be determined by a majority of the vote. Eken notes that the last three gubernatorial election and the Coleman/Franken contest were decided by pluralities.

“I think it’s time. We’ve had a series of statewide elections where no one has received a majority of the popular vote,” Eken said.

If the amendment were to become law, the Legislature would need to determine the voting method that would produce a majority. That could include instant runoff voting (IRV) or another method to ensure a majority victor.

One Response to “7 policy matters that will get serious play at the Capitol in 2010”

1. Bill Coleman Says:
   January 25th, 2010 at 12:15 pm

   It would be great to see some bonding money for broadband for either public, private or public-private partnerships for infrastructure development. There were approximately 20 shovel ready projects that applied for stimulus funds. This would be a great way to bring broadband to MN and support projects that could benefit from low-cost money.